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			<h1>Should I switch from <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> to <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr>?</h1>
			<p>Day 00499: <time>Monday, 2016 July 18</time></p>
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<p>
	I&apos;m thinking about switching to $[I2P].
	At the very least, I might switch to using <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> on the mobile.
	There are several factors to consider though.
	<abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> addresses are less reliable than onion addresses, but they&apos;re also less centralized.
	That comparison needs to be explained a bit though.
	The second level domains under &quot;onion.&quot; in onion addresses are sixteen random characters long.
	<abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> has a similar naming scheme, where the third level domains under &quot;b32.i2p.&quot; are fifty-two random characters long.
	The &quot;random&quot; characters in both cases are based on the hashes of the public keys, ans as a result, both ate pretty reliable, as total hash collisions aren&apos;t common.
	You could even say that <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> base 32 addresses are <strong>*more*</strong> reliable than onion addresses due to the fact that they&apos;re longer, so hash collisions are harder to create.
	However, almost no one uses these long, unreadable addresses, as far as I know.
	Instead, they use an address book that acts as a sort of hosts file.
	This allows the creation of very short, very meaningful names, like in regular <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr>.
	However, these names are as meaningless as domains listed in your system&apos;s <a href="file:///etc/hosts">hosts file</a>.
	While <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> address books are sharable across the network, one simple fact remains.
	The same host name could (and often probably does) exist in several different address books and point to very different places.
	There&apos;s no authoritative way to determine which one is the canonically-correct entry, and in fact, they basically are all equally correct.
	Names are very important for locating resources, so this seems like a huge problem to me.
	However, there&apos;s another way of looking at that issue as well.
	Onion addresses are defined by hidden service directories that <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> hidden services have to register with, and which other <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> clients have to use to perform lookups.
	The centralization of <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> gives the <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> Project a monopoly on that power; similar to the monopoly imposed by nonfree images such as those Orbot icons.
	<abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> seems to lack those issues as far as I can see.
	<abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> on mobile also lacks options for transparently proxying applications though, which is needed for applications that don&apos;t have proxy settings.
	<abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> isn&apos;t as good for outproxying, either.
	I&apos;m told <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> uses <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> for outproxying, which means that instead of being able to use <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> to escape <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>, I&apos;d be using <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> as another layer <strong>*in addition*</strong> to <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr>.
	Perhaps that&apos;s enough though.
	Debian protects me from whatever nonfree things the <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> project decides to throw in, at least in the main Debian packages, because of their strict licensing policies.
	Furthermore, <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> works just fine on the command line in Debian, so there are no images to get in the way.
	On the mobile though, graphical applications are needed and F-Droid doesn&apos;t provide the protections that it should against nonfree &quot;non-software&quot; parts of applications.
	The <abbr title="Invisible Internet Project">I2P</abbr> layer would keep my mobile free while still connecting me to the main <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> network.
	I could continue using <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> directly on my laptop and server.
	Lastly, the &quot;i2p.&quot; pseudo<abbr title="Top Level Domain">TLD</abbr> isn&apos;t recognized by <abbr title="Internet Assigned Numbers Authority">IANA</abbr>, while the &quot;onion.&quot; special-use domain is.
	Then again, I&apos;m not really a fan of the way <abbr title="Internet Assigned Numbers Authority">IANA</abbr> operates.
	Should I even be bothered if I&apos;m using something that deviates from <abbr title="Internet Assigned Numbers Authority">IANA</abbr>&apos;s noxious standards? After all, they&apos;re the ones that demand that all domain registrants be available to be contacted via a telephone number.
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